Few subjects are more likely to attract widespread TV and press coverage than an investigation of the dangers of the Pill, now used by 9,000,000 women in the U.S. alone. In full awareness of that fact, Wisconsin's Senator Gaylord Nelson used his monopoly subcommittee last week to conduct a highly publicized investigation of the oral contraceptive that at times seemed more like a trial than an empirical examination of the available medical evidence.
The subcommittee's announced intent, according to Nelson, was to "explore the question whether users of birth control pills are being adequately informed concerning the Pill's known health hazards." The fact is, they are not—either by the Pill's proponents or by its crusading critics. And as Nelson pointed out: "It is important that women be informed about all aspects of use of the Pill so that they are able to make an intelligent, personal decision about its use."
Fallopian Fallacy. But when Nelson lined up his witnesses, adamant critics outnumbered defenders by seven to one. Most conspicuously missing from the roster was Harvard's Dr. John Rock, co-developer of the Pill, a conscientious Roman Catholic and a thoughtful advocate of research to reduce the Pill's admitted and harmful side effects.
Nelson chose as his lead-off witness Dr. Hugh J. Davis, an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Johns Hopkins University. Since 1962 Davis has specialized in intrauterine devices (lUDs) and he is one of the inventors of a ring device not yet on the market. Davis argued that "breast cancers have been induced in at least five different species of animals by treatment with the same synthetic hormones being marketed in the oral contraceptives. Every important agent which has a carcinogenic [cancer-causing] effect in humans has been shown to cause cancer in animals. There is no reason," Davis insisted, "to presume that the single exception will turn out to be the oral contraceptives." Neither Nelson nor the only other Senator present, New Hampshire's Thomas J. Mclntyre, caught Davis up on what might be called a Fallopian fallacy: while it is correct to say that everything known to cause cancer in man also causes cancer in animals, the converse is not true.